


not afraid to keep on living

by growlery



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Misses Clause Challenge, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 04:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alison Hendrix is a lot of things. One of those things is a word that starts with C and rhymes with <i>alone</i>, but it is only one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not afraid to keep on living

**Author's Note:**

  * For [treewishes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/treewishes/gifts).



> Thanks to K and Y for being excellent soundboards and betas. Title is from Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance.

Alison is pretty and smart and the kind of confident that makes people mutter, “Bitch,” but never to her face, so she does pretty well for herself in high school. She’s not popular, exactly, but she has plenty of friends and always has something to do on a Saturday night and never hates her life more than is strictly necessary for a teenager going through puberty. 

She does pretty well for herself. 

She meets Donnie in her sophomore English class. It’s her favourite, and her hand is always the first to fly up whenever Ms Donovan asks for volunteers to read the set texts. They’re paired up on a group project, and- well, the rest of it is obvious, isn’t it? But it wouldn’t be a cliché if it didn’t make for a good story. 

The first time they kiss, they’re at her house to work on the project. Donnie says something unexpectedly funny – she won’t remember what, later, but she’ll remember the way it startles a laugh out of her, and how shocked and kind of genuinely _pleased_ Donnie looks at the sound of it. She’ll remember how she thinks that she’s always noticed he was cute but it’s sort of impossible to ignore now, and how she bites her lip and leans forward and presses her lips to his. 

It’s short and sweet and a little bit wonderful and she’s beaming when she sits back. Donnie looks kind of shell-shocked, in all honesty, like he hadn’t seen it coming at all, has no idea how to process the situation. But he smiles when she smiles, and when she leans forward to kiss him again, he meets her halfway. 

They don’t really do the dating thing, not properly; they spend the rest of that afternoon making out lazily on Alison’s bed and when Alison’s mom yells up the stairs that dinner’s ready and does Donnie want to stay because there’s plenty of food, Alison sits up, looking at him with a question in her eyes. 

He looks back at her, his hair a mess, his lips red and bruised, and says, “Yeah, I want to stay,” and just like that, they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. 

Well, almost just like that. Alison finds him at his locker the next morning and holds his hand and by the time they’ve got to class, practically the entire school knows they’re together. But she still jolts a little the first time Donnie calls her his girlfriend, is still taken a little off guard. 

The first time they break up, it’s halfway through their senior year. They’ll be going to college soon and Alison doesn’t know if they can do the long-distance thing and Donnie insists that they can, if they try, “If you love me enough,” he says, and something in his voice makes Alison feel so suddenly, inexplicably angry that she snaps back, “Well, maybe I don’t.”

It takes her three weeks to apologise, three weeks of missing his voice and his smile and his mouth on her skin. When she goes over to his house she thinks she might be a little too late, that Donnie’s over her, that Donnie’s asked out that girl Claudia she knows he thinks is hot, but when he answers the door after he’s left her waiting on his doorstep for what feels like an age, his face lights up for just a second before he mutters, “Hey,” and Alison’s heart swells with hope. 

“Hey,” she says quietly, and then, because she’s nothing if not direct, “I missed you.”

Donnie’s silent for a few seconds, just stares at her, his arms wrapped around his waist, and then he says, “I missed you too.”

She’s not sure who moves first but in a minute, they’re kissing, clinging to each other. Alison mumbles an apology and Donnie fiercely kisses it away, says, “Don’t, just don’t,” and they stay there until Donnie’s father comes out and says, rather pointedly, that perhaps Alison should come in and they can make up somewhere that isn’t their front porch. 

And somehow, they make it work. 

Somehow, they get through college, get through being without each other for long stretches at a time, get through the inevitable envy of the many others who get to have the one they love when they don’t, get through the tiredness and the loneliness and the fear that maybe this wasn’t worth it after all. 

And on Alison’s graduation day, after Donnie’s hugged her half to death and told her over and over how amazing she is, he gets down on one knee and says, his eyes glistening and his smile wide, “Will you marry me?”

It’s the most surprising thing he’s ever done, but what might be even more surprising is that Alison says yes without even thinking about it, pulls him up into her arms and presses her grin against his. 

&&

Alison doesn’t cry when they find out she’s infertile. Alison drinks a _lot_ of wine, but she doesn’t cry. 

It’s kind of a relief, actually; they’ve been trying for a long, long time, and the frustration and the steadily vanishing hope have left scars on their relationship that Alison doesn’t know will ever heal. 

Alison has wanted to have children for as long as she can remember, since she was four and playing with dolls, meticulously brushing their hair and carting them around and telling them off for imaginary mischief. Donnie only wants children because she does, because he loves her and because he wants to make her happy, and some nights, after he pulled out of her and they were lying in bed, their backs to each other, he’d mumble, “Maybe this isn’t worth it, Allie.”

Alison climbed out of bed and slept on the sofa, those nights, didn’t even bother responding. 

It’s Aynsley who suggests they try adopting, after Alison tells her the news. Alison doesn’t particularly _want_ to tell her; Alison doesn’t want to tell anyone, but people are going to find out anyway, and if people are going to know then Alison is going to be the one to tell them. 

“Adoption?” Alison repeats, and Aynsley nods enthusiastically. 

“It’s a great alternative for people who can’t have children naturally,” she says, smiling, and Alison smiles back at her, her teeth gritted at the condescension in Aynsley’s voice. 

Alison looks into the adoption process as soon as she gets home, researches adoption laws and looks up adoption agencies in the area. She decides against going private, waiting for a newborn baby, not because they can’t afford it, but because she stumbles across figures for the numbers of kids stuck in the care system, kids who can’t be placed with families, kids who get too old to be adopted, kids who need more care than a baby would. 

It breaks her heart to think of so many children growing up like that. She doesn’t need to have a child first, just for her, for it to be her child.

The first thing she does is prepare for the home study, and make sure that she and Donnie are absolutely perfect prospective parents. She grills Donnie on potential things they could be asked, over and over and over, until she can see he’s visibly holding himself back from snapping at her, and then she relents for a day before bringing it up again, over breakfast. He gives her a weary, miserable look before saying, “Yes, we are definitely in a position to support a child.”

Alison’s sorry, but she’s not that sorry. They’re not going to get this wrong. They _aren’t_.

&&

Having children turns out to involve a lot more running around than Alison expected, which is why, after both Gemma and Oscar insist they have to take up soccer because soccer is just the _best_ , mom, Alison decides to join the gym. She’s not as in shape as she used to be, and it’s starting to wear on her. 

She signs up for the usual stuff, but also a dance class which Aynsley promises involves a lot of kicking and punching. It’s scheduled to start at 10am, and Alison ends up being late for the first class because she had a bit of trouble getting Gemma and Oscar to go to school. Someone’s been hassling them, and as soon as she finds out who she is going to murder them, and by murder obviously she means have a stern talk to their parents and demand they keep their evil hell-children away from her kids. 

She’s late, and she’s stressed and worried about Gemma and Oscar, so she doesn’t pay too much attention through the dance class, just follows the motions and tries not to get left behind. It is fun, though, makes her blood rush through her veins and her heart pound staccato and her worries slowly melt away over the course of the hour she’s there. 

At least, that is, until the end, when everyone’s packing their stuff up and Alison turns around to leave and there’s a woman who looks just like her standing on the other side of the room. 

Alison gapes. 

It’s not just a passing resemblance; looking at the woman is like looking into a mirror, seeing the planes of her face and the set of her jaw reflected back at her. She looks like she could be Alison’s twin, except for the fact that Alison doesn’t _have_ a twin, not that she knows of. 

Alison keeps gaping at the woman, unable to quite process what’s going on, and finally the impossible woman looks up and catches her gaze. Her face that is not Alison’s face but looks so very much like it does something complicated. She doesn’t look anywhere near as shocked as Alison feels and Alison _has no idea what’s going on_. 

The woman walks over to her, not exactly quickly but not taking her time, either, her eyes fixed on Alison’s. She stops a foot in front of her, a safe distance away, and says, “We need to talk, somewhere with fewer people. Follow me to my car?”

Even her voice sounds like Alison’s, if a little bit blunter, a little bit flatter. Alison thinks she might cry. It’s possible she’s kind of hysterical. 

“Okay,” she says, proud of the way her voice doesn’t shake at all. 

Alison follows her out to the parking lot, opens the passenger door of a sleek, nondescript car, slides inside. The other woman gets in next to her, gaze fixed firmly ahead of her. This close, Alison can see that it’s not quite a mirror reflection; there are unfamiliar lines on the woman’s face, a hardness to her eyes that Alison’s never had, hopes she never will have. 

“So go on then,” she says. She still feels wrong-footed and vaguely terrified but she’s had time to calm down, process the situation, and now she just wants answers. “Talk. You clearly know more about this-” She gestures in the gap between their faces. “-than I do.”

“Correct,” the woman says. “I also know that your name is Alison Hendrix and that you’re from Edmonton and that you recently adopted two young children after learning of your infertility.”

Alison determinedly does not gape, not this time. She refuses to be surprised, refuses to be caught off guard. “And how,” she says quietly, “do you know so much about me when I know absolutely nothing about you?”

“I’m a cop. My name is Beth Childs. I found you after cross-referencing my facial structure with the database of Canadian drivers’ licences.” Beth turns to look at her then, utterly serious, and says, “We’re clones.”

Alison gapes at her, and gapes at her, and gapes at her. 

Finally, Beth sighs. “This wasn’t how I planned on approaching you. I was going to build up to it or _something_ ,” she mutters, “but when you saw me, I couldn’t just leave it.”

Alison swallows hard. When she finds her voice again, she says, “I don’t know who put you up to this, but it is not funny and I would appreciate not being messed around.”

“I’m not messing you around,” Beth says, exasperated. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“Clones,” Alison repeats, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice. “You expect me to believe that we’re- that I’m someone’s science experiment?”

“Yes, I do,” Beth says, and Alison has to laugh, long and high-pitched and more than a little hysterical. She cradles her head in her hands, staring at her knees to focus her breathing. “I’m sorry,” Beth says, after a minute. Her voice is soft, and she doesn’t sound like Alison does when she’s lying. Alison doesn’t know what that means. “I know it’s hard. But there are lots of us, all over the world. I can prove it to you.”

“I believe you,” Allison says tiredly. She lifts her head and sees Beth studying her, her own face expressionless. 

“Good,” she says. “That’s good.” Beth’s quiet for a moment, and then she says, “We’re going to figure out what’s going on here. There’s another- there’s another, in Canada. Her name’s Cosima. She’s a scientist. She’ll need a DNA sample from you, but we can do that some other time.” Beth smiles, tight but genuine. “I’ll be in touch.” 

Alison nods, recognising the dismissal for what it is. “I can contribute too,” she offers. “I have money. You can use it for- whatever. Figuring this out. I don’t know.”

Beth nods too. “That’ll be really useful,” she says. “Like I said, I’ll be in touch. I’ll give you a few days to process things.”

“Thank you,” Alison says, and she means it, hopes Beth can tell. 

She gets out of the car and walks slowly, steadily, back to her own. She doesn’t look back once. 

&&

Alison drives around aimlessly for a few hours, unwilling to go home and face the washing and the cleaning and all the other things she has to do. It seems suddenly so insignificant, in the face of what she’s learnt.

When she tunes into her surroundings again, rather than just running on autopilot, she realises she’s en route Gemma and Oscar’s school, and keeps driving. Alison parks up outside and undoes her seatbelt and puts her feet up on the dashboard like she’s always yelling at the kids not to. 

“You’re a clone,” she says harshly, and the word tastes so bitter in her mouth. _Clone_. A copy of another human being, or perhaps just one of a set of copies. Alison is a clone. 

But Alison is also a mother, and a wife, and a friend. Alison has a life, a life that is hers and no one else’s. She’s more than _just_ a copy. Alison is a real person. Alison is important. Alison _matters_. 

“You’re a clone,” she repeats, a little quieter than before, and then she gets out of her car to wait for Gemma and Oscar.


End file.
